


Bright and Wild

by uumuu



Series: Fëanorians beyond the First Age (AUs) [16]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-08-05 13:52:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16368821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uumuu/pseuds/uumuu
Summary: Fëanor's ghost upsets his brothers' dinner.





	Bright and Wild

**Author's Note:**

> The story is written from Fingolfin and Finarfin's perspective but it's not about them at all.

“Fëanáro is visiting,” Finarfin said, nodding towards the night-sky in the east.

Indis whipped her head towards the same spot in the starlit distance Finarfin had been gazing at.

“If you will excuse me,” she said. 

She hurriedly stood up, while Fingolfin nearly choked on the wine he had been drinking.

Finarfin resumed eating, not at all bothered by how their mother left him and his older brother alone on the terrace that had overlooked the town of Tirion in its heyday and now opened on a grassy landscape. The smaller town that had replaced Tirion stood a little to the west, in the shade of Túna rather than built on it, and was mostly invisible from Finwë's house.

“What –” Fingolfin croaked out once his coughing subsided. “What do you mean Fëanáro is visiting?”

“Just what visiting means.”

“Arvo!”

“I'm very serious.” Finarfin sat a little more upright, careful not to upset his plate. “You know how the Valar condemned him and his sons and their staunchest followers to never be able to find shelter and rest in the peace of Mandos, or anywhere else?”

Fingolfin nodded: that was common knowledge.

“Well, the thing is, Fëanáro and his sons didn't go on to live the hapless, wretched life houseless elves are supposed to. They might have in the beginning, before the Valar decided to have Eärendil carry the Silmaril across the night sky.”

Finarfin paused and met Fingolfin's gaze to make sure Fingolfin was following his line of thought. 

Fingolfin could not have been paying more attention.

“Some believe instead that Fëanáro and his five sons who died before the War of Wrath did enjoy a brief sojourn in the Void, and that they brought back some sort of power from said Void. Be it as it may, Maedhros died with the Silmaril, with the desire to keep it forever, and he did keep it. With two Silmarils to draw sustenance from, Fëanáro and his sons and their followers organised into a...well, a procession, or a march of sort...thousands of spirits moving almost as one. They can usually be seen accompanying Eärendil on his nightly journey, but sometimes they make a detour on Valinor. I bet he's heard you came back and wants to visit you,” Finarfin concluded.

“You mean the trail of light that surrounds Eärendil isn't a natural thing?”

“You thought it was?” Finarfin chuckled good-naturedly, amused by Fingolfin's surprise. He put his plate down and poured himself a generous glass of wine. “I suppose it could look like a natural phenomenon...or a divine one, even.”

Fingolfin kept quiet while his brother drank. He furrowed his brow, trying to see what Finarfin had described. He concentrated and managed to make out a cloud that seemed to flash and glow. It was still a vague enough shape that could pass for a halo, but grew bigger and bigger. It drew closer at an alarming speed, in fact. Trepidation prickled his skin. 

“What do we do?”

“Nothing. Just act normally when he talks to you.”

Fingolfin glanced at his mother's vacated divan across from them, shifting on his seat. “Are you sure it isn't dangerous?” 

“Mother doesn't like to be in Fëanáro's presence, for obvious reasons, but he means her no harm. If he had, we wouldn't have a mother to speak to now.”

The idea was very marginally reassuring, but there was nothing to do other than wait. Fingolfin wasn't a coward. He had never run from his brother, and had not run from Morgoth, and he would not run now.

The next time he looked up the cloud of light was passing over the Pelóri and descending towards them. Before he knew it, the patch of sky above their heads was teeming with a multitude of fëar all pressed together so closely they almost did look like a single, one-minded entity, like Finarfin had said. 

Fingolfin could make out warriors ranged in ordered lines, ever ready for battle. There were people dressed in mangy loincloths, carrying pickaxes and shovels and other instruments they had become one with in their thralldom. Others wore chains, and carried instruments of torture. A woman with her breasts half torn-off made a pair of pincers click and snap, a cadenced sound that wormed its way into Fingolfin's brain and stayed there. A few didn't look wholly elven anymore.

Fëanor strode at the head of the procession, with Curufin at his side. His five other sons loomed behind them, all taller than their father and brother, so that when they finally stood facing Fingolfin and Finarfin they hid the rest of the fëar.

Fëanor descended until he was almost level with his half-brothers, except that he was at least ten times larger than them. He wore a memory of what he had looked like when he set out for Middle-Earth, dark metal half-hidden under the finest red velvet and embossed leather. His black hair fell in tangled waves over his shoulders, and ended in a trail of darkness that looked suspiciously like something that should not have been part of Arda as the Valar had conceived it. 

“Hail, Ñolofinwë, Usurper-King,” he said, reaching out with a hand made of fire. Fire crackled when he moved. 

Fingolfin tried to keep calm: Fëanor had to be joking. “Good day to you, brother.”

Fëanor's face had something feral to it – not the sort of savage twist they had come to associate with orcs and yet something not quite elven either – but his terrible fiery eyes seemed to glitter with true mirth while he greeted Finarfin next.

Finarfin raised his glass at him.

“I trust your stay in Mandos was not too unpleasant,” Fëanor said, and turned to look behind him.

Behind Fëanor, to his left, Námo dangled from Celegorm's hand by the front of his shirt. His arms and legs were limp, and his hair straggled downwards too, drab and lifeless. His eyelids had been torn off, likely from being dragged in the cold air of the upper skies for days on end. Fingolfin forced his gaze away from the Vala's unnaturally wide-eyed face and dragged it up Celegorm's arm to a mouth opened in too wide a smile which showed a few teeth too many. 

“It wasn't,” Fingolfin replied. He understood now why Námo was gone from his Halls for extended periods of time without a satisfying explanation. 

“I suppose your sons are due to be re-embodied soon, aren't they?”

“I certainly hope so.”

“I wish you a happy second life.”

“Thank you.”

“Well, since we're here, let us go visit our King and Queen!” Fëanor bellowed. Plates and glasses and cutlery rattled loudly, and nearly fell off the table when the multitude of demon-fëar responded with a collective shout of enthusiasm and started a belligerent chant as Fëanor regained his place at their head and they moved off. 

Fëanor's sons nodded their heads to Fingolfin and Finarfin. Maedhros had two hands but neither held the Silmaril. The Silmaril was embedded in his forehead, vertically, like a third eye whose light hid his true eyes and was nearly impossible to look at. 

“I thought you said they were denied access to Mandos?” Fingolfin muttered, his eyes following the cloud until it shrunk back to a hazy halo of light in the western sky.

“They can't _stay_ there, but they can visit, especially if Námo is their...guest,” Finarfin explained. Fingolfin looked worriedly at him. “Oh, don't worry, Námo doesn't come to any real harm. Unlike elves he doesn't even need to heal...so long as his power still holds, at least.”

“How do the Valar tolerate that?” 

“They can't do anything about it. They tried.” Finarfin tore a bit of bread from a plate on the table in front of him and dipped it in the nearest sauce, his appetite not compromised in the least by the encounter. “You know the story that Tirion was destroyed when Númenor attacked us? The truth is, it was burned to the ground a few years earlier. One night Tulkas decided to free Námo and maybe scare the Fëanorians into never coming here anymore. The next day Fëanáro and his folk swept down on Tirion, raging like wildfire. Luckily we were still few and managed to escape before it was too late.”

Finarfin poured himself more wine, looking wistful.

“To be honest, it was a wondrous thing to look at...Fëanáro just kept tearing handfuls of fire from his very bosom and hurling them down on the town's buildings. I've never seen anything more stupendous, not even during the War of Wrath. The fire itself was like a living thing. Manwë sent rain, but it evaporated before it even reached the ground. Seven days later the town was a pile of ash, except for Father's house.”

Fingolfin turned to gaze all around him. “Isn't there something we can do?”

“I'm not sure.” Finarfin scrunched his face, showing a little concern for the first time. “I would like to get the Valar to relent and let Fëanáro and his sons find a place to settle in Middle-Earth. Valinor is out of the circles of the world now, and they would still get no pity and no help. Mind you, I want the Valar to relent not for Fëanáro's sake, but for our own safety. Fëanáro may mean us no harm, but if the Valar decide to do something inconsiderate– ”

“Stupid.”

Finarfin laughed. “If the Valar decide to do something stupid again to try and stop Fëanáro, and he doesn't react well to it, which is a given, we will suffer the consequences, as it was always the case with anything the Valar decided.”

“What of Macalaurë?”

“It's anyone's guess what Macalaurë is up to. There have been no reports of sightings of wandering Fëanorians from Middle-Earth, but Macalaurë could be literally anywhere and our kin aren't anymore. You would think that he would have rejoined his father and brothers, if they had met, but who knows. He could be up to anything or nothing at all. There's also the possibility that Fëanáro might not care about something so trivial as rest any longer.”

“Basically, it's like being caught between anvil and hammer.”

“Something like that, but hush now.” 

Indis was coming back.

She sat down again and resumed her earlier talk, intent on pretending that Fëanor's visit had never happened.

Then there was a sudden rumble. The top of a red head of hair sprung up from the ground, followed by a pair of hands. One grabbed onto Indis's lower leg, large enough to span the whole length of it. Indis took one look at it and her eyes rolled back in their sockets while her senses left her. 

The owner of the hands pushed himself up and stood to his full, staggering height. 

“I beg your pardon,” Maedhros said to Finarfin. “I almost lost my balance.”

Finarfin shrugged his shoulders, raising a hand to shield his eyes from Silmaril-light.

Maedhros upturned the table – Finarfin was glad to still be holding onto his glass – and retrieved a ring of chain from the ground. “One of my friends lost this,” he explained, holding it up. “Apologies again.” 

He smiled and sank back into the earth, feet first. Where his flaming hair had swept the ground, tongues of fire were left behind. The smaller ones wavered and went out in tiny puffs of smoke, but the larger ones rushed to coalesce and dive into the ground after their owner.

“There you have it,” Finarfin muttered, standing up to throw his lap blanket over his mother's senseless body. “God knows how many more accidents such as this one will happen if Celebrimbor comes back and decides to settle down somewhere around here.”

No reply came from Fingolfin: he too had passed out.


End file.
